While driving home from work on Monday, 10/07/2025, I switched on WDLW, 1380 AM and, almost immediately, heard Quiet Riot's great version of "*** On Feel The Noize". WDLW was coming in exceptionally clearly. I was really in the mood for that song, and to hear it on AM radio was cool. Immediately following that, they played John Lennon's mid-1970s chart-topping hit "Whatever Get You Through The Night". Those two songs went together well. WDLW is worth checking out for historically based Rock and Pop-Rock fans. Pleasant surprises are, often, the order of the day.
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Rockin' home with WDLW!
- Thread starter johnbasalla
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It only lasted a month (March 2003) and no reason was given for why it ended. Probably was a lot easier for WELW to do its own thing with Ravenna Miceli and Scott Howitt.
I recall that the mini-network of WDLW and WELW was when WDLW was just starting to build things up to enter the format.
I noticed that they dropped 'Oldies' from the name. Its now called just 'Kool Kat' The format is now listed as Classic Rock.
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@GaryT could confirm but that happened in 2023 or so?I noticed that they dropped 'Oldies' from the name. Its now called just 'Kool Kat' The format is now listed as Classic Rock.
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IIRC, They called it the "Buckeye Radio Network" (which might have caught the attention of a certain college down I-71).
One annoyance was that if I listened to the "network" on the west side on 'DLW, they never synched up their spot break time lengths (each station aired their own commercial breaks -- sometimes with WELW airing up to 90 seconds more of commercials), which led to a lot of jingle vamps (looping jingle instrumentals) before they reverted back to music.
It was a daring concept, but it fell flat on it's face. Give them credit for trying with what they had, though.
There was AFAIK never any paperwork filed but it's likely WELW (or at the very least, Tony Petkovsik) did a time-brokerage agreement in 1997 to have programming simulcast on 1380, which was owned by Vern Baldwin of Cincinnati. And yes, it was the source of the WDLW calls; that Doug and Lorie Wilber bought the station in 2002 made for a nice backronym.
Yesterday, during afternoon drive time, WDLW played "Skinny" ( "...little boy from Cleveland, Ohio. Gonna steal your women and drink your beer"), a song played a lot on 1970s era WMMS. Once again, a surprising choice, and one that keeps me tuning in now-and-then.
The Eastlake station (WELW) was by far the Alpha Dog of the two, thanks to their strong ethnic programming.
Speaking of the Eastlake station, I heard they have not been operating at full power for some time due to damage to one or more of their four towers. Are they going to make that a permanent arrangement, relying on their FM translator to be their primary vehicle? I can no longer hear them now, they used to boom in like a Cleveland station.
Hey All ..yes we did remove the word oldies from our name due to several reasons but most notably the word meant something different to alot of people we talked with. We have now branded Kool Kat as Good Time Rock and Roll ...we still have our oldies jukebox on saturday morning and most of the music in rotation is from 65 to 85 ...also trying to reach a younger audience. I know we wont ever make everyone happy ..but that change took us into another level of listenership , advertisers and truly kept the doors open. Feel free to reach out anytime. I will always answer the best I can ...Keep Rockin with local radio!!!
I wish there would be a little room for the biggest, and longest lasting hits, from the 1950s and early 1960s.